"Minuscule samples, uncontrolled experiments, exquisite analysis of heterogeneous data, and unsupported speculations in place of measurements are all common features of biological determinist literature. Paper after paper published in the leading journals of human and behavioral genetics... commit the most elementary errors... which would never be tolerated in, say, the Agronomy Journal or Animal Science. To write about human beings gives one a license not extended to the study of corn!" Rose, Kamin and Lewontin

Do humans have free will? Or is our behavior determined by unseen forces beyond our control?

For thousands of years philosophers have debated this, but now we need to know. War, nuclear weapons, climate change, overpopulation, tyranny and poverty; as humanity enters its seventh millennium of civilized existence, but its first as a technological society, the species has tough choices to make. It is crucial to know if we control our options or if other forces drive us in directions we cannot foresee. The distinguished founder of sociobiology, E O Wilson, believes that the answer is in the human genes. Wilson formed his ideas a quarter of a century ago and now everybody realizes it is more complex than that. But earlier it did seem that science was about to prove that genes, not willpower, determine human behavior. Wilson was influenced by a new field of science using game theory to analyze to which extent genes were determining behavior. The results were impressive.

For example, we pride ourselves that while animals copulate indiscriminately humans restrain themselves to male-female sexual pair bonding through human moral qualities such as love. But we are also curious as to why if animals are without morals pair bonding should still occur in many wild species, especially birds. In his book "The Selfish Gene" Richard Dawkins provides the answer. Using game theory, Dawkins shows what would occur in the development of a sample colony of birds which includes two types of females, coy and fast, and two types males, faithful and philanderer. Yet despite the different sexual temperaments all any individual male or female bird tries to achieve is to assure that its offspring and hence its genes, survive and propagate. Only for birds, raising young is a complex business, so male and female individuals must be careful. The female requires a faithful partner for nesting and raising young so she must ensure she gets a loyal mate. The male, who does not lay eggs does not physically invest much in procreation, so he can hedge extra bets by sowing wild oats with other females, providing he ensures that at least one female nurtures young for whom he is certain that he is the biological father. Using these ground rules Dawkins shows that far from morals being involved it is merely the evolutionary benefit of each female to be coy, providing that by being so she can force all other females to be coy, and all other males to be faithful.

Yet, the analysis does not stop there. The test of any system is what happens when instabilities are introduced. And, the instability in bird colonies is one familiar to humans; it is that not all individuals play by the rules -some are cheats! Once all females are coy, all males will be faithful because apart from rape, they have no choice. Only some females might have trouble getting suitable partners at all, so it will benefit these females to become fast, and snatch otherwise faithful males away from coy females. (As in the story of Eden in tales told by men the female is always the troublemaker!) Except if too many females become fast males will cease being faithful. In that case it would benefit individual females to play coy again to uncover which males are most faithful, and so on. But what is interesting, and it can be proven by math or on a computer is that after the coy, fast, faithful and philanderer strategies have all been tried the model does stabilize, and in a recognizable way. The majority of females remain coy while a smaller majority of males remain faithful to coy females, philandering on opportunity. So, without any reference to love, morals, or culture, and using nothing but mathematics and the natural instincts of birds, scientists can create a model of group sexual dynamics some people might consider markedly similar to how humans behave.

But if such techniques can model human-like behavior, does it follow human behavior is constrained along such lines?

Well, humans are products of biology and as far as has been observed, at least on Planet Earth, the only factors that can affect permanent biological change in species are genes. An early theory of evolution by Lamarck suggested that giraffes obtained long necks because individuals stretched their necks to reach high leaves, and passed on the modification to their offspring. This theory is false, or strictly, as a mechanism of inherited traits it is false. In our new theory we allow that early giraffes did stretch their necks, only that did not cause changes at the genome level! Stretching one's neck, losing a limb in an accident, learning a new skill, or growing fat, are acquired characteristics, and acquired characteristics are not passed on. Instead, although early giraffes did stretch their necks among the giraffe population some individuals were randomly born with slightly longer necks. Despite stretching, those giraffes who were simply born with longer necks competed more successfully in the wild with shorter-necked giraffes so they mated more successfully, and passed on more offspring. After many generations the long-neck producing gene came to predominate throughout the giraffe gene pool.

The same biological processes that gave giraffes their long necks produced human evolution. Or, as Dawkins suggests, if humans were not subject to the same processes something unique has happened, which also needs explaining. Humans evolved over millions of years of evolution, in which time many sub-branches of humans either evolved to be the one successful species, Homo sapiens, or were wiped out in the evolutionary struggle. In conventional theory we are not sure why human ancestors evolved so rapidly or why other fast evolving but unsuccessful near-human sub-species were wiped out so completely. The Theory of Options will explain why, but conventional theory is that other species may have been inferior at survival, or may have taken a wrong evolutionary turn. Or perhaps the others were a gentler species and the more aggressive humans were able to wipe them out. Whatever it was in prehistory the genes of Homo sapiens gave them better adaptation for those times. Biologically humans are not a chosen species. They are just a species that under a set of circumstances survived when others perished. We inherit the genes of that survival, so we need to know how well genes that guided our survival in primitive circumstances effect our behavior today?

Consider the case of the disappearance of a near-kin hominid species, the Neanderthals. Some 15,000 years ago in Europe humans and Neanderthals were competing for food, mainly meat from wild herds. There is evidence that the more resourceful humans made camps on hill-tops where they could observe herds better, while less adventurous Neanderthals stuck to the low-lands, and ultimately perished. This makes any human "climb-your-highest" mountain gene a survival asset. But suppose that it was not about mountains. Maybe the Neanderthals were equal to humans every way except one: the humans were more ruthless. They ambushed the Neanderthals and massacred them. Dawkins told us that we are the "lumbering robots" of our genes and the basic instinct of genes is to survive. Massacring the Neanderthals would be another survival strategy, but what would that make us? Is today's aggression our genes reenacting an ancient massacre of the Neanderthals? We know humans can be extraordinarily aggressive. After explaining how genes encode the motive of human aggression while culture provides the form, Wilson concludes flatly that in humans war is a straightforward example of "a hypertrophied biological predisposition".

This type of inference is usually made with the best intentions, warning humans that if we want world peace, we must work doubly hard to achieve it because our genes are most likely working against us. Such warnings come with admonitions that we also must face the facts of science.

Only getting the facts right is the whole debate. There has always been a politically Left-leaning nurture view of behavior and a Right-leaning nature view since Greek times. In modern times this split has been overlaid by "Creationist" anti-scientific attacks on Darwinism, so it might seem that any evolutionary explanation of behavior should be welcomed. But the theories of genetic determinism stunned the nurturist camp by reducing human behavior to the brute needs of biology. Even if one's outlook is opposed to religion, if one's political agenda calls for a caring, morally concerned society, theories that morality is an illusion of gene selfishness does not further that goal. So, nurturist scientists bitterly counter-attacked. They accused some scientists of everything from dangerous ideology to bad or even fraudulent science. Left-leaning biologists such as Steven Gould even came up with a counter theory to what they called adaptationism, and the arguments became very heated. Seminars Wilson held to present his views were disrupted by rowdy students. Steven Gould was bitterly attacked by some scientists. And despite that he had defended Darwinism against Creationist attacks in debate over school curricula, Daniel Dennett postulated that Gould's nurturist doubts arose from a secret sympathy for religion. He used as evidence that in his articles Gould frequently (gasp) quoted from the Bible!

Today, the political climate surrounding these issues has cooled somewhat. Each side now concedes that they do not have all the answers, and admit that some of the criticism was valid. So, apart from the polemics we need to understand what is the scientific controversy over genes and behavior really.

The real problem is that arguments like those of Wilson made it sound as though human characteristics are Mendelian; in that each characteristic can be traced to a single gene. And for many hereditary diseases this is the case, with a single gene per defect. Sickle cell disorder say, is caused by mutation of a single gene allele. So is cystic fibrosis. These genes have been isolated in the lab and their occurrence and spread through a population happens exactly the way predicted in the equations used by Dawkins, Wilson et al for tracing alleged genetic behaviors. Plus these cases where a single "bad" gene can cause medical defects helps clarify the issues not only medically, but in view of the debates politically as well. Nobody wants to pass hereditary disease onto offspring, so most couples accept voluntary restraints if genetic counseling reveals a danger. In this manner the old eugenics scheme of preventing breeding among the unfit does have a modern, humane, voluntary, offshoot.

Only the controversy was never about hereditary disease, but concerned nebulous characteristics like behavior and intelligence. Such characteristics are non-Mendelian, arising from entire groups of genes, sometimes called polygenes, like those for height or skin color. Plus genes causing hereditary defects are usually identifiable in other ways as mutant, lethal, or parasitic. Yet, genes determining intelligence or behavior are not defective in a medical sense, but part of life's variety. If anything, genetic variety is a mechanism of the survival strategy of any species. The total genetic variability of any species is never expressed among the majority population, but variability is available if the conditions of struggle change. With domestic breeds, humans breed out characteristics that are not useful to the human intent. But if domestic strains were exposed again to wild conditions they might not have the genetic variability to survive as a species. So while significant progress can be made isolating "bad" genes medically, it is harder to isolate "bad" genes in a behavioral or racial sense. Especially, genes that allegedly give rise to complex behaviors, such as love, hate, pride and aggression, have never been isolated in a laboratory, while the controversy concerns whether such behavioral genes exist at all.

So, despite other progress, even towards mapping the human genome, knowledge of complex behavioral genes in humans is still only inferred. Without knowing anything about the genes we infer that if a modern individual behaves a certain way, then the behaviors that individual inherits must have been fit behaviors in the past. Crudely, if behavior of a creature's ancestors were not fit its descendants would not be alive today. This makes the behavioral moves of modern individuals fit by decent, because all failed moves have been filtered out by termination in the line of unsuccessful individuals. Using this it should be possible to 'calculate forward' which one, from a set of moves, an individual will make in a behavioral situation by inferring that the genes a modern individual inherits will drive it to enact fit moves only.

The argument continues that not only can behaviors be calculated forward, but backwards from present behavior to a gene from which the behavior arose. This is used in determining insect and animal behavior, but becomes controversial when applied to humans, especially for isolating the behavior in the first place. One behavior Wilson made much of is the appalling practice of female infanticide in India. With no attempt to examine the social conditions that produced infanticide in India, Wilson felt that this behavior could be calculated back to a genetic origin. Similarly, having observed that some wild animals kill offspring of rival males one could seize an incident from history such as Herod's murder of the children of Bethlehem, to try to calculate back a human behavioral "gene" which provoked Herod's abominable act. From a huge gamut of human behaviors available for study, which ones are chosen for analysis appears to depend on an interest factor of the sociobiologist. This is a further part of the controversy. To critics the sociobiologist seems obsessively concerned with infanticide, adultery, violence, or bizarre sexual practices among mostly backward or isolated human cultures, but without any analysis for the social conditions causing these events to happen. On the other hand, the sociobiologist is often just trying to gather "evidence" to support a particular theory. But as the theory is problematic anyway, it leads to sources of evidence that appear to critics more a preoccupation than a balanced evaluation of broad human behavior. And while how the Aztecs or some strange tribe arranged their sex life might be interesting, to the non-specialist it is only of interest in balance among other information about sexuality that might be more relevant. Plus while many bizarre behaviors in other tribes or cultures are attributed to genes, there is no clinical evidence that any of these complex behavioral genes, like for infanticide, harems, and so on actually exist.

So while mathematical modeling of behaviors has produced many startling genetic inferences most success has been with insects, and next with birds, taxa far removed from humans. Even for something we know exists, like aggressive human behavior, it is difficult to prove a precise cause isolated to a gene. Even if there were an 'aggressive' gene in humans, by the same theory there would also be pacifist genes, and an optimal balance of aggressiveness versus pacifism, just like coy and fast genes in sex. Humans are aggressive, but they show great compassion too. So, the best genetic modeling can only tell us that aggression, like sexual infidelity, is a gamble of opportunities gained for risks taken, balanced among a population. In the wild that gamble is resolved by success or failure of individuals to survive. In human evolution, we are not certain even this premise any longer applies.

For example, if only heritable but not acquired traits can be passed on this process can only apply to individuals. And this would apply to the example of killing the Neanderthals, even if such an event occurred. If somehow only males who were brave in battle were allowed to procure offspring, this would allow "brave in battle" genes to predominate. Similarly, if individual aggressive humans killed all the individual pacifist humans, then aggressive genes would spread throughout the human species. However, if the event only killed off all the pacifist males, but allowed pacifist females to live the pacifist gene would survive. But even killing off both lines would require killing in all tribes, because at the time the Neanderthals perished human tribes were already widely dispersed. Even then, humans in tribes do not fight other tribes as individuals, nor does the whole tribe fight. The less aggressive can still care for the sick and wounded and organize food supplies, a division of labor that makes the human fighting machine far more efficient. There is even controversy over whether tribes in face-to-face combat are actually that aggressive. Studies have shown that native fighters often try to wound the enemy and drive him away, rather than just kill everybody. Studies have also revealed, strangely, that statistically humans are a mild species when it comes to murder of their own kind even allowing for wars, compared with say lions, though these types of statistics are always controversial.

Apart from this, killing off the Neanderthals was only something Europeans did. And as it is mainly scientists of European stock who worry about these things, this mostly results in theories that it is other races who bare all the faults of humanity. Wilson say, makes much of how behaviors can arise racially in a few hundred generations, and different races allegedly can evolve different behavioral characteristics apart from appearance and skin color. Yet humans are still one species, which scattered over the Earth with a basic set of genetic characteristics over 50,000 years ago, before many of these alleged genetic behavior arose. However, studies show that in large, dispersed but interbreeding populations it is very hard to get genes to either dominate completely or delete completely from the gene pools of life. So whatever early groups did in isolation they still today interbreed with the entire human family, and we inherit an incredible mix of behaviors and propensities. Scattered throughout the human gene pool are genes for everything. By whatever means Humans competed with Neanderthals there was a gene among humans for aggression, one for caution, one for climbing mountains and one for staying on lowlands. But the real genes which made the difference for humans were those which gave humans a different means for evaluating their true options, apart from blind reflex.

This is the issue about genes. There is no question that biology shaped the human species while genes mold us as individuals. Our shape, looks, race, sex, emotions, reflexes, appetites and physical brain structure are all heritable characteristics, determined by the genes. We must not dismiss too that there are "behavioral" genes within us lending impulse to our character, just as there are deep psychological drives which we cannot always understand. But the human species would only be behaviorally controlled by genes to the extent that other species are, if humans adapted to environmental change the way other species did. Short-sited genes of other species lock those species into a particular environment robbing them of true options. They force individuals within the species to adapt to changes in environment without any exercise of options other than those that the genes encode. The process by which the genes manipulate the train of evolutionary cause-and-effect is fascinating science and we can learn much from it. But humans have science because knowledge increases options and because human genes were smart enough not lock humans into predictable environments, and predictable patterns of response. So we have today many interesting and provocative theories about genes, and people should know what these theories are. Only we must caution that there are no conclusive proofs of any of these theories, at least for a long time to come. If anything, science has since those times revealed that genomes are more complex than at first thought. Today, "selfish" does not even refer to genes expressing alleged intent by manipulating the phenotype, but renegade parasitic or lethal recessive genes that try to multiply without any benefit to the host. Plus the size of the human genome is now acknowledged to be immense, with some three billion DNA letters, of which expressed genes might be less than 3% of total DNA.

The other caution is that while genes do shape behavior to an extent, this is only part of the issue. As we shall see in the next section, evolution theory in general has been under attack for several failures of explanation, but one of them being to adequately explain human motive. This book will explain human motive by evolution, but only from a perspective more in line with other criticism of evolution. In this sense the issue is not so much that genes shape behavior, but the mechanisms of how they shape it which seem to work for birds or insects might not work as directly for higher animals, and certainly do not work very directly for humans. Some 20-30% of human behavior might be explained by genes, and we should take account of this when explaining all of human behavior. But the while part of human behavior can be explained by genes, this alone does not account for those parts of human behavior which seem learned, autonomous or driven solely by cultural or psychological experiences. Nor does it expiate the criticism that the theory of evolution currently understood can only explain part of human behavior, but still not all of it.

Still, good ideas can come from bad theories. While genetic synthesis of behavior is beyond the scope of present science, a more practical and less political goal is to at least map those genes that cause heritable diseases. Here, if one can get hold of a family lineage tree the method of calculating back to isolate a gene that causes a distinct characteristic, such as deafness, can work. And this result might be how we sometimes expect life to work out. We start with a grand scheme of isolating the alleged bad behavioral genes of humans and improving the species through cloning and eugenics. When this scheme collides with scientific and social reality it gets scaled back into something more practical. This is tracing the genes that cause heritable disease, and providing voluntary counseling to couples that might be at risk. Only while genetic counseling is workable, for theorizing about behavior or intelligence we are for now still stuck with only inferred genetics and metaphorical genes. Here, inferences of genetically determined behavior are along the ideological lines of a nature-nurture debate, rather than facts which science has been able to prove in a lab.

Yet, it also seems strange that at the end of the scientific century humans still cannot reach consensus on what they are. Science works by proving that a certain causes will always result in certain effects. But we have had a century now of cause-and-effect theories of behavior, and while they have all been instructive we still end up with humans having to make choices, so maybe this is one assumption we need to make at the outset. Scientifically, we are not certain why in a universe of cause-and-effect we end up with intelligent beings making choices. But since it happens we should acknowledge it from the outset and from there discover what other useful things we can learn about human behavior. It is a bit like if we cannot learn which genes determine behavior, we can at least learn which ones cause heredity disease, which is a useful and practical thing to know. This is why this book states that the purpose of human behavior is to increase options. It will be proved by subsequent argument that this is also the correct evolutionary explanation of behavior. Even so, we always hope to gain from any theory of behavior not just a blueprint of how humans are compelled to act, but knowledge which increases human options, including the options of how to behave in future.

Yet, how do we know that humans do have free choice?

For that matter, if science reveals that all effects have causes, do we even live in a universe in which free choice is possible at all? This should be a central question of behavior. Before we study genes or psychology, we should at least settle in our own minds they type of universe we live in, and whether choices in it are possible at all.

So, let us examine this, as the first major issue in the path to understanding human behavior.